I've reheated the same
Cup of coffee five times
This evening

Trying to write something
For myself that accurately
Describes how I experience

Often I am flooded in the ordinary
By the emotion and the density
Of life itself, in all its majesty

And sometimes I am left
Devoid of sentiment
In moments deemed worthy

I get lost in thinking of
The way the future will
Tangle with the present

I find myself stopped in
A memory as well,
A reminder, a fragment of past

The present is a fleeting concept
A paradox, I think
A circle of thought

At what point
Does the future become the present?
And the present become the past?

I've looked at you and felt
My heart fall apart within my hands
But I've seen your face and knew
My next fifty years of plans

When every worldly sense is severed,
When not a muscle moves,
When our consciousness relents;
                     I wonder - Who Are You?
The time which slides our every moral
And we cannot be untrue,
We have no will to restrict our strength
                     So I wonder - Who Are You?
In the time when nothing holds us back,
Just before we come to;
Is there someone else so far within-
                     That I must wonder - Who Are You?

It is not significant by any means
But yesterday I hurt my toe
It bled and is still sore
I almost said on the phone

And I almost disclosed
How my fitbit is precisely
Two days, three hours, and twenty seven minutes off
In time to wake me up at 4:33 am
Wednesday through Sunday
And to turn it off
I must walk
Half asleep, tripping over crumpled clothes
In the dark
And most days I must do it twice
Because it doesn't believe my feigned woken state

I almost said how I think of you
And miss being able to spend all day
Inseparable and evergreen
Sometimes I ache to think of how far
I put myself away from you
Constantly
But when I mention the aching
I am met with an "It's okay"
But it feels the opposite way

And just yesterday, as I gave it more thought
To something I forgot,
Something I had been scared to ever feel
Palpable and real
With a wide open heart, I concurred
That I could be happy anywhere in the world
If you and I were together
I forgot how I used to be
How the sheer thought of needing someone else
Has terrified me

I don't feel as alone
I almost said on the phone
I don't feel as without
I am enjoying the time by myself

These things are by no means
Things you absolutely had to know
But things I had hoped to share
I know you are busy
I know you care
But I wanted you to know
I had more to say on the phone

It's a heart on world with my sleeve steadily exposed
A life line on a call line, dial 888 to be controlled
Puppets on a string to compose this household
The happier we'll be the more we're enclosed

       Smaller spaces to lengthen the gap
       Encircling our inner self control
       Consuming what's left of the demons
       Trying to get a refund on our soul
      
Love changes colors like a rhyme
Smooth and easy
Eyes like the darkness of time
Slow and steady

Yet we're still not ready for the fight
Insanity walks through the door
And just when the time is right
Our beliefs slowly melt into the floor

Did I ever disclose
The exact moment I really found myself
Thinking about you seriously
In the way that the guarded part
Of my heart wouldn't allow me to?

I sat in a crowded room in a new hotel
Quick glances at social media before
The conference started, before the hush
When I scrolled past your face on the screen
Well, more specifically, the top of your head
Looking down, focused intently
On fixing a multi thousand dollar projector
Eager to take on new tasks, very handy, ready to help
And forgetting to sensor my own thoughts
I envisioned you fixing a broken hot water heater
In a starter home for us two
Laughing as you mended trivial things that I broke
Due to my knack for unintentionally destroying
Whatever comes in contact with my hands
But I saw you there with me, in the not-so-distant future
I saw us together, happy, very much in love,
And I thought "Wow, I could marry that man,  I want to"

Then I caught myself
My guarded heart kicked my wandering mind
In the seat of its pants as I teared up and reminded myself
Not to get too attached, not to be too trusting
Not to dream of it, for it won't happen anyway
The part of me that has learned that it is better
To be closed and prudent
Rather than to open my heart up
With the possibility of it shattering

But as I've spent more time with you
Seen your exposed heart and held your hand
Shared mine, showed mine, let you hold mine
I've realized that if I don't open up to the chance
Of having you hurt me
I would never get to experience the sweetness
Of truly loving you with my whole heart

*Perhaps you have been fixing the thing
That needed fixed most of all